That has to be ego, which can make someone think they can beat anyone. Hearns wanted to fight Tyson after he beat Virgil Hill. It is a good thing someone talked both of these guys out of those fights.
McCallum was also a sparring partner of Hearns' and trained at the Kronk. There's actually a really funny back and forth between Hearns and Roy where each claims the other would've gotten eaten alive by their contemporaries.
It's in Damian and Brian Hope's biography on Hearns. Part of the reason Hearns and Steward had a brief falling out was over Hearns wanting the Roy fight and not feeling like Steward was trying for it. He talked about fighting Jones and Toney after he got that WBU title at cruiser as well. Here's the excerpt from chapter 18: Hearns also exchanged insults via the media with Roy Jones Jr., regarded by many as the best pound-for-pound fighter then active and someone he would have loved to cross swords with. “If he had come along in the eighties,” said Hearns, “he’d have been chewed up and spit out by Ray Leonard, Marvin Hagler and Roberto Duran. He definitely was another notch in my belt.” The twenty-six-year-old Jones, who was due to defend his own super-middleweight title, responded, “If he [Hearns] had come along in the nineties, he’d have been slaughtered.”
Roy Jr was 168 pounds of you-don’t-want-none. Tommy’s lucky Manny kept him away from this mission of self-destruction.
Putting RJJ on the other side of the equation, it's a good thing he and his management were smart enough to avoid pursuing the potential Lennox Lewis fight at HW. Recently, I'm glad that the Jarrell Miller vs Anthony Joshua fight fell through, as it made for a much more entertaining night at the Garden for me.
Mike Tyson v Mark Gastineau was being discussed during Mike's title reign. Would've been an absolute car crash.
Cooney’s team offered Ali 1 million sometime after the Ali Holmes fight. The way Cooney hit and how Ali laid on the ropes at lot at that point it could gotten ugly. Ali’s team turned down the offer.
Because I don't think it would've turned out the way many think it would've. Salvador most likely would have lost.
That would have been a good fight. The kind of fight that people should have been trying to make at the time!